Researcher MA Keping, head of the Biodiversity and Ecological Security Project, was invited to participate in the "Gaining scientific consensus on approaches for biodiversity assessment" held at the Clare College in Cambridge, UK from May 20th to 24th. The seminar was held by the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC), the National Geographic Society, the Luc Hoffmann Institute, and the NatureMap consortium. SHEN Xiaoli, the project's scientific research backbone and associate researcher of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, participated in the event.
This seminar was attended by nearly 60 biodiversity research and conservation management professionals from international organizations such as the World Conservation Union (IUCN), International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International (CI), International Bird Union, Qiuyuan and other international institutions that have long been committed to biodiversity monitoring and conservation data analysis, as well as research institutes such as Cambridge University, Oxford University, University of Helsinki, University College London, etc.
The host of the meeting first reviewed the global progress of the post-2020 biodiversity conservation framework and related work carried out by WCMC. Prof. MA Keping and associate researcher SHEN Xiaoli introducedChina’s ecological protection policies and actions such as China's ecological civilization construction and ecological protection red line. All the participants discussed on such topics as the current status of spatio-temporal data on biodiversity, how to interpret 2050 vision and set post-2020 protection goals, how to monitor and assess global conservation progress, and how to assess threats and drivers of biodiversity loss. WCMC, IIASA and other institutions introduced the Nature Map project which aims to provide biodiversity data, information and analysis tools for the Convention on Biological Diversity and each party to it.
